


Maybe Later, Through the Years - Finale Coda

by Cerulea



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Acknowledged character growth and development, Bittersweet, Dean's real talent was always caring not killing, Except actually post 15x19 bc the finale never happened, F/F, Finale Coda - for our mental health, Found Family, Full on 'TITANIC' see your dead lover once again vibes, Grieving Dean Winchester, Loss, M/M, Mature Dean Winchester, POV Dean Winchester, Parental Dean Winchester, Post-Finale, So i'm letting him care for people, This fic entirely ignores the BMOL, cool?, instead of just dying gloriously in battle, men exemplifying the heroism of DEALING WITH THEIR FEELINGS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:13:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerulea/pseuds/Cerulea
Summary: This is the Finale Coda I have written for my general mental health. Things go exactly as in Canon except that everything relating to Cas in 15x19 (i.e. Dean's sort of wishy-washy explanation of his death) didn't happen and the finale doesn't exist.Dean and Sam have survived saving the world and besting God himself. Now it's time to assess in the aftermath.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Kaia Nieves/Claire Novak
Comments: 22
Kudos: 102





	Maybe Later, Through the Years - Finale Coda

**Author's Note:**

> Thank You to the Supernatural series finale for being so very much *that bitch* that I was forcibly plucked from a bout of debilitating, depression-driven writer’s block to write this out of both spite and desperate, undeniable need.

**It’s been a year since he’s been gone.**

He’s been gone before, but this is different. This time it feels... permanent. Nebulous and hopeless at the same time because The Empty isn’t really death, per se, but it is fathomless. In that, Dean can’t fathom a way to undo Cas’ idiotic swan dive into the dark-forever.

Self-sacrificing jackass. He did it for him - for Dean. Or maybe he did it because he knew Dean and Sam were the only ones who were gonna be able to take on Chuck. But the way he did it, that sad smile that makes Dean’s skin burn in remembering... Of all the beings Cas has seen and known in his millennia of existence, the one who he sacrifices it all for is Dean fucking Winchester. An eleventh hour power play complete with tear-filled confession and all. 

What a dramatic asshole.

To go like that. To, again, make some big, crazy game-changing decision without even talking to Dean. Without weighing the options. Without giving Dean a minute to.. to think, to... 

To do what?

Even now Dean can’t imagine what other play he could have made that saved them both. Maybe there wasn’t one.  Maybe his way he would have died and Cas would have lived.  He doesn’t know. What he does know, is that he’s been walking around a year now with this simmering _rage_. And he hates himself because he should be able to handle it like Sam - to cry and mourn and laugh about the good times and lament about how _good_ he was, at heart. But Dean can’t. Because he’s angry. And every time Sam starts with a “You remember that time Cas-” Dean’s heart aches and his blood boils and he slams his way out of the room like a fucking child. 

It’s been a year and Sam’s officially well past the point of informing Dean that he can fuck all the way off with his petulant brooding because Cas was _their_ friend, _their_ family, and he deserves to be remembered. To be talked about fondly and thought of with love, and why can’t Dean get his head out of his ass and show him at least that much respect? 

It nearly cracks Dean wide open because if Sam only knew - _thought of with love_. Dean scoffs. _Love_ is a stupid word for the torrent of things he feels for Cas, but it’ll have to work. 

It’s after that, post Sam’s chastising and nearly a year to the day since he’s been gone and they’ve officially surpassed the longest of previous times that Cas has been ‘gone’, that Dean prays. It’s embarrassing, even alone. He’s gone all the way down to the garage, sat in the driver’s seat of the impala and locked the door. Windows closed. He looks around to make sure Sam isn’t there, even though he knows he’s not. His hands are shaking and his stomach is in knots. 

“Cas,” he starts, barely loud enough to make a sound at all, “you got your ears on?” 

Nothing. 

This is why Dean didn’t want to do this. Because there’s no answer and there never will be. Cas is gone. He can’t hear Dean and he can’t answer and damn it, Dean didn’t need that fucking confirmation. He slams his hands against the wheel.

“Ok, ok,” he breathes deep, gathers his thoughts. If Cas really is gone, then there really is no one listening. Dean can say whatever he wants. Even the truth. Even if said truth is cruel. 

“I hate you,” Dean mutters bitterly. “You’re a selfish prick. We could have - we could - you didn’t have to do that! You took the easy way out and left me here and I fucking hate you.” His throat is tight, his eyes burning hot, but he can’t stop. “What was the point? What was the point of you saying all that shit to me? If you were just gonna...”

The tears slip loose and Dean fights a breath in and scrubs a hand roughly down his face. “Whatever,” he bites out. 

“Bye I guess.”

***

**It’s been five years** and Dean’s starting to feel it - the rough road, the years of bad food and hard fights and no sleep. Sam is looking good. A little thin maybe but he’s tan and bright and Dean’s seen his dimples more in the past two years that he’s been married to Eileen than in the past twenty. Sam and Eileen have a little house about forty minutes from the bunker and they run the best damn network of hunters the world has ever seen short of Bobby’s low-tech shenanigans back in the day. The bunker is the nerve center of all of Sam’s brilliant plans. The kid has basically changed and refined the world of hunting one well-implemented system at a time. 

Dean isn’t dense enough not to notice that fewer and fewer hunts gets punted his way. And he knows that Sam knows he's figured it out, but they’re both just pretending it isn’t a thing. The fact that Dean doesn’t bother to harangue Sam about it or demand more work is a big revelation that hangs over both of them. Hovers over every conversation they have. But neither of them speak of it out loud.

The truth is, Dean is feeling it. 

His age. He’s tired, and he aches, and the fire to get out there are do what his Dad taught him has waned. He likes his life. It’s slower, more domestic, but Dean’s at no loss for action. He moved to be closer to Jody about two years ago, after Sam and Eileen became an inseparable unit and Dean was happy enough for them to not want to get in the way. Jody’s penchant for acquiring wayward monster-kids and victims of everything that goes bump in the night has only increased with time. She’d called Dean for assistance with an absolutely wrecked and furious recently-orphaned teenager and it had been the most challenging and rewarding mission he’d thrown himself into for years. When Dean didn’t hurry up and leave once the coast was clear, Jody was kind enough not to mention it. She folded him into the every day tasks and dramas of her operation seamlessly and two years later, with Dean living in a small fixer-upper down the street, she still hasn’t bothered to ask him if he’ll stay. 

Sometimes he watches her with her raised eyebrows and her arms crossed over her chest taking absolutely zero shit from some punk who thinks they know what it means to be grown and the heartache that grips Dean nearly knocks him off his feet. She’s so much what he needed at that age. 

She’s so much like Bobby. 

He would have loved this. Griped about it constantly to cover the bone-deep affection for every one of the maladjusted little assholes that come through this house, yes, but he would have loved it. Dean misses him more these days. Now that things are quieter. Now that he is quieter. He wishes he had him here to talk to. 

***

 **It’s been ten years** and Dean’s got more high school chemistry books floating around the house than weapons. Oh there are weapons, he’s not that much of a chump. But he’s more inundated with progress reports from the local high school than he is demons these days. He’s got three living with him right now. All victims of the supernatural in some way or other. All too young to face the world on their own.  Sometimes when he’s feeling deep and philosophical he wonders at the fact that he’s sort of transformed into a weird amalgamation of all of his father figures - Dad, Bobby and Sonny. 

Jody seems to have a little better handle on the girls these days, and she’s sure to rub it in every time Dean calls her at two a.m. to inform her that one of his has flown the coop. Her patience is a gift, even if her meddling is a nuisance. She likes to tease him about his monk-like ways, offer to set him up with women from town. He laughs her off, sometimes even jokes that she doesn’t know _everything_ that he gets up to. But the truth is, the idea of it doesn’t feel right. 

It never feels right. 

Claire, it seems, is always at odds with someone. Usually Jody. They love each other to the core but they get to fighting like a house on fire. It’s become less and less unusual for her to stop by Dean’s place, putting whatever young hoodlums he’s got stinking up the joint in their place with a vicious ease. After all this time and so much water under the bridge Dean is somehow the one she can talk to. Dean surmises it’s because she knows he’s the most fucked up. 

He can tell in the way she blows into the house like a stormcloud that this week’s issue is Kaia related. They’ve been on again off again for more than ten years and while they love each other and everyone in their lives is rooting for them, they just can’t seem to get it together. 

Kaia went to therapy, went to college, has a bright future ahead of her in the civilian world. One that Claire respects but isn’t able to completely accept. She reminds Dean so much of himself sometimes. The cockiness, the poorly hidden self-doubt, the refusal to give up the fight. Dean hadn’t had someone who loved him the way Kaia does Claire, to encourage him out of the life, so he holds out hope that Claire will be one of the lucky few who are capable of straddling the line between a civilian life and a hunter’s. 

He doesn’t tell _her_ that though. He values his nose un-broken. 

Claire and Dean have a strange sort of friendship that centers around shared prickly, curmudgeonly attitudes and an intense but unable-to-be-spoken love for Cas.  Dean shies away from wondering whether Claire knows that a big part of the reason Dean’s gone out of his way to always be there for her is because it’s what Cas would have wanted. 

“She gave me an ultimatum,” Claire bites out, dumping herself heavily in the chair across from Dean. “Can you believe that?”  She puts her boots up on the empty, neighboring chair and Dean kicks them down. She rolls her eyes but keeps her feet on the floor. 

“What was the deal?”

Claire balks, “You can’t be serious!”

Dean shrugs, sips his beer, “Be stupid to make a decision without all the factors.”

“ _Ok, well_ ,” Claire drawls petulantly - she’s grown so much over the years but she never really lost that, “the deal is, I give up the long hauls and searching out my own hunts, and attempt to transition into _‘normal life’_.” The aggressive air quotes make Dean smile through heartache. What is it with these people and their ridiculous inability to properly utilize an air quote? Much like Castiel, Claire’s people skills are rusty. 

“Hm,” Dean offers. She stares at him expectantly, impatient as ever. “Could always come work at the bar,” Dean offers. 

She balks, moves as though to bite out what is sure to be a scathing retort about what she commonly refers to as _Dean’s shitty little dump full of sad-sacks_ , but stops herself. She watches him carefully and thinks for a moment. She surprises them both when she says, “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet. You’re gettin' the overnights.”

She rolls her eyes. 

***

**It’s been twenty years** and Dean’s got enough pills to take daily that he feels like he may as well swallow a pez dispenser. He wouldn’t take them at all, but Sam is so damned insistent. Dean’s pretty sure the kids ratted him out; Alex is over the house checking his pills and the contents of his fridge at least once a week. He pretends to grumble but they both know he’s happy every time she drops in. He’s happy when any of them drop in. And it’s a good thing because Dean’s home is a revolving door of former wards who crash in and out of his peace and quiet to eat his food, steal his beer, and just generally interrupt his life. 

Sam is over all the time now that he and Eileen have retired nearby. They still do a bit of phone-answering and networking, but they don’t hunt and they stay pretty detached from the bunker. They’ve left it in good hands, a homegrown network of hybrid Hunters and Men of Letters - the brains and the brawn. Sam and Eileen have left quite a self-sufficient legacy behind in their wake. 

They never had children. When Dean asked Sam about it, years and years ago now, Sam had merely smiled kind of ruefully and stated that Dean was always the born caregiver of the family, and he’s got enough kids for the both of them.

Dean is in his sixties and damned if he doesn’t ache. He’s young to be in such bad shape, he knows it. But forty years of hard living with the expectation he’d be dead long before he had the opportunity to go grey didn’t exactly set him up for his golden years. He’s had to lay off the booze, as well as the cholesterol. He never thought he’d have to worry about something as inane as lipids.

It’s kind of funny, getting older. So much of the fight in him has just sort of... relaxed. But not in a sad way. In the way that Dean feels sort of free of himself - of the version of himself he used to work so hard to uphold. The image. He doesn’t give a rats ass what anyone thinks anymore, and he finally feels safe enough to allow some of the facade to slip. It used to take so much work to seem unflappable, fearless; it felt necessary to survive in a way that it absolutely does not anymore. He lets himself admit to things a little more easily than he ever has, and it’s freeing. He doesn’t fight his feelings, doesn’t lie when he needs something, and doesn’t feel ashamed to have needed something in the first place. Much of his anger has melted away with time. 

And Dean has long since given up trying to forget _him_. 

He thought after five years, then ten, then fifteen, maybe the ache of his absence would dissipate. But it never has, and he’s too old at this point to bother putting any more effort into hiding the truth of what he felt. What he _feels_. There are a few pictures of Cas that Charlie took all those years ago in a rare, stressless moment in the Bunker that Dean keeps around the house. For a long time they’d resided in a box that he kept tidy and secret under his bed, only taking out when he had long hours to sacrifice to feeling gutted and alone. But over time Dean became capable of looking on them without so visceral a response. Eventually, the sight of them, of Cas, around the house is a comfort. When the pictures start showing up, more and more prominently displayed, the kids - now mostly grown - ask questions. Dean answers. Sam smiles through tears the first time he sees Cas artlessly magnet-ed to Dean’s fridge. Cas is kinda blurry, head tilted in question, blue tie askew. Jody and Donna both give Dean the exact same weirdly maternal, sad but proud expression seemingly without planned coordination and Dean makes a loud ordeal about how creepy that is. It’s Claire whose reaction most surprises him. The more Cas’ image is kept, reverently, at Dean’s side, the more she seems to get frustrated with Dean, finds ways to turn her back to the photos. 

He’s the man Dean loved, he can finally admit that - but he’s also her long-dead father. 

She comes in, already buzzing with anger, Kaia tentative at her side. Something is wrong, and Kaia is doing her best to communicate solely through eyebrows and expressive dark eyes that Claire is nearing some kind of flash point. But before Dean can even get ten words out, Claire's eyes snag on the picture on the mantle. It's been there for years, and for all of those years Claire has been careful to not really look. 

It's a weathered old image of the day before they sought out Lucifer. Sam, Dean, Bobby, Ellen, Jo, and Cas. Everyone in that photo aside from Sam and Dean are dead. And Cas... he looks so young then. So alien, in his way. This photo was taken not a year after Jimmy Novak said _yes_. 

Claire stalls mid rant. Gets lost in the image long enough that Kaia reaches out, calls her name softly. And when Claire turns her eyes are full of tears but her face is full of fury. She storms out of the house, knocking the photo over on her way. Kaia immediately bends to clean up the glass of the frame, her expression stressed and mortified. But Dean lays a hand on her shoulder, tells her it's ok. 

Dean steps out onto the front porch and sees Claire hasn't made it far. He drops down onto the step beside her; neither of them is dressed for this cold. 

"What's going on, kid?" Dean asks, voice calm. He's got experience in this. 

"I'm not your kid," she snaps. "I'm not anyone's kid. I was his kid. Except, that's not even him. That's just Cas, wearing his face!"

"I'm sorry-" Dean starts, intending to tell her he understand how painful it must be, to offer to take the photos down. But he doesn't get the chance. 

“No, no it’s great. The way you hang his picture all over your house. Like he belonged to you. Like he was yours!" She tries for angry, but her voice shakes and her tears are free-falling. Dean knows better than to say anything.  “You never even told me,” she bites out angrily. “How he _died_.”

Dean sighs. He’s known this was coming for a long time. He thought it would have come so much earlier, and he’s ashamed he kept it from her all these years. “Right before the last big fight, Death came for me.”

She squints at him, “What is that, you being dramatic? Don’t write me damn sonnet Edgar Allen, just spit it out.”

He rolls his eyes and glares at her. “I’m not being flowery here, jackass. Death - literal, scythe-wielding _Death_ \- was after me.”

She blinks. “Death is a person.”

“Death is Death. But... yeah. She looked like a person.”

“Death is a _woman_!?”

“Are you gonna let me tell this?” She grumps but stays quiet. “Death was pissed at me, she was coming after me, and Cas and I were trapped in the bunker alone. The fight with Chuck was on the horizon and Sam was out with Jack trying to save everyone’s lives and there was Death, shoving us into the mousetrap. Cas, he...” his voice fails him a moment and she does him the kindness of not reacting. “He sacrificed himself to save me.”

She takes a deep breath, looks out across the frosty grass. “Where’ve these photos been the past decade?”

Dean frowns, tries to find away to describe it. “It hurt too much. To look at him. Knowing I let him down.”

She looks at him a long moment before nodding. They sit there, quietly in the cold, both thinking about him and before Dean can stop himself he blurts, 

“He told me he loved me.”

She stares at him, and Dean doesn’t look at her but he can feel her sorting through what that revelation makes her feel. “What did you say?” she asks.

“...Nothing,” Dean’s voice can barely hold the word. “And then he was gone.”

He pretends not to see it when she wipes her eye on her shoulder.

They never speak of it again, but after that Claire never seems to begrudge him the need to have Cas nearby. 

Dean prays now a days more than he ever has. Never to heaven, never to God - or Jack, as the case may be. No, Dean just... talks. Only to Cas. He updates him on life, tells him random thoughts, admits things that made him think of him. That night he tells Cas about Claire. About how he’d told her what Cas had said. It’s the only time in the past twenty years Dean has acknowledged, out loud, what Cas admitted.

***

**Thirty years.**

Dean’s been feeling off lately. Not for long, just the past week or so. And not too horribly - some little piercing, short-lived pains in the chest off and on, extra fatigue that has him heading up to bed earlier and earlier.

He knows what it is. 

Sam frets over him, demands he make another appointment, but Dean waves him off. Toward the end of the week Sam’s skinny form darkens his doorway with that set to his brow that Dean knows spells stubbornness of a near-inhuman potency. Where he might have once let his hackles raise in the instinct to fight, now he chuckles a raspy, “Jeez, Sammy,” and just retreats into the house for Sam to follow. Dean sits heavily, the task quite an event, and settles into his old armchair. All the while Sam rants and raves at him, remaining standing because he’s a spritely damned show-off, and Dean just watches him. His hair is thin and short, much to Sam’s dismay, and all grey now. His skin in spotted with age, his fingers knobby and stiff, but his eyes still have that fire of determination, that obstinate resistance. Sam stops mid-sentence when he realizes Dean is just serenely smiling at him.

“Sammy,” Dean smiles, “just sit down.”  Sam, sensing something in his tone, actually does it. It’s less of a production for him, Dean notes.  “How’s Eileen?” Dean asks, brightly. 

Sam quirks his head at him, “She’s... she’s fine. She’s good. Dean-”

“She needs to buy you a cheeseburger. You’re skin and bones-”

“Dean, _please_ ,” Sam begs. But he doesn’t get any further. 

Dean puts his hand out, signaling to quiet him and says Sam’s name quietly, calmly, in a way that he hasn’t in a long time. His brother goes still and silent and waits.  “I never told you about that last day,” Dean says, gathering his strength. “About the last time Cas was... when I lost him.”

“Dean,” Sam lays a hand on his brother’s forearm, “you didn’t-”

Dean covers Sam’s hand with his own. “Just shut up and let me tell you this,” he says not unkindly. Sam nods. “Billie was coming for me. We were trapped, in the bunker. There was no way we were getting out, and there was no way we were winning a fight against her. We were boxed in, no options. That was gonna be it. Then Cas, he looks at me and he tells me he made a deal.”

Sam’s head tilts, eyebrows twitching with surprise. 

“When he was in the Empty, he made a deal to get out. That he could come back, but if ever there was a time he felt true happiness, the Emptiness would be summoned to him, and would take him. So you know what that asshole did?” Dean smiles through tears. Sam shakes his head, his own eyes wet. “He told me he loved me.” Sam’s look of surprise makes Dean laugh. “Yeah,” he chuckles. “I’m talking full-on, _you complete me_ , _wish I knew how to quit you_ , love confession.” Sam’s speechlessness gives him space to continue, “And it worked. Him just... telling me, just saying it out loud, it made him... happy.” Dean rubs his sleeve against his eyes to stem the flow but it doesn’t do much. He takes a deep breath and adds, with renewed strength, “The Empty came, took Billie, took Cas, and that was it. _God_ , how I hated myself - hated him. For so long. I didn’t know how to deal with it, what to feel. I don’t think...” Dean’s expression crumples as he fights through that old pain, that long-gone shame, “I don’t know if I could have loved him back. Not then. But I hated myself because... I _wanted_ to.” The way he admits it, Sam knows he’s never said it out loud before. “ _I wanted to_.” 

“Dean,” he mutters, holding more tightly onto his arm.

“So many years,” Dean’s voice is breaking, “imagining how it could have been. Wishing he was here. Feeling so... so regretful, of how things got left. And then, last year, I started to be able to feel him.”

“Feel... Cas?” Sam asks, suspicious. 

“I know what you’re thinking. But it’s him, Sam. I swear. It’s like... like I’m never really alone. Like when I talk to him, I know somehow he’s listening. I think,” he gathers his will, “I think maybe he’s here to tell me it’s ok. To tell me it’s time.”

“Dean, no. That’s not-”

“The jig is up here, Sammy. I can feel it. And I think, maybe... maybe it really is him.”

“Dean," Sam tries gently, "the Empty took him. He might not...” he can’t stand to say it, but they both know what he means. Maybe it’s cruel, but Dean understands why Sam feels like it has to be said. He’s never let Dean give up. That’s not what this is, not really, and Dean knows Sam will see that eventually. But Sam wouldn’t be Sam if he didn’t point out the logical pros and cons of some crazy decision Dean’s made.

“I know, I know. But Cas or not, I’m tired man. I’m tired and I’m... happy. I gotta tell ya Sam, I never thought I’d have that.”

“Yeah, me either.”

“I need you to do one more thing for me,” Dean clasps his hands over Sam’s sleeves, “I need you to tell me it’s ok.”  Sam breaks then, cries outright and ducks his head, resting it on their forearms. “Sammy,” he rests one hand on he back of Sam’s head, “I need you to tell me it’s ok.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Sam begs into their sleeves. 

“It’s time,” Dean says, “it’s time. Any day now, man. I'm telling you Sammy, I can feel it. And I need to know you’re ok.”

Sam shakes on a stifled sob, but he nods, then looks up at Dean. Dean watches him shore himself up, gather his strength, like he has so many times before. “It’s ok,” Sam says, voice watery but strong. 

Dean smiles at him, his heart feels so much lighter. He nods, pats Sam’s arm and exhales loudly, “Ok. Come on. Suck it up,” he teases.

Sam nods, but his hands shake as he wipes his face. 

“I don’t know what you’re crying about, Skeletor,” Dean jokes. “You’re gonna be right behind me by the looks of you. 

Sam huffs exasperatedly and pulls Dean into a hug, laughs wetly into his shoulder. Dean can’t help but to hold him tight, cradle his head in his hand. There are still so many times that he can’t believe they made it. Sammy grew up, grew old, fell in love. Dean didn’t do a half-bad job and he tells Sam so. Sam agrees. 

It’s only a few days later that Alex knocks on Dean’s door, and he doesn’t answer.

***

Dean had always loved Bobby’s old cabin up in Whitefish. 

He’d hated being stuck there, at the time, hiding from leviathan, laid up with a broken leg. But he had loved the cabin itself. The land was so beautiful, the house itself small and homey. Sam and Dean’s usual rough living and Bobby’s general drunkeness had gone a long way toward making the place messy and uninhabitable. But underneath all that was the battered wood and old stone of a place tucked away from danger. Dean had liked to daydream during those long, uneventful hours what the place might be nice if he spruced it up. If they lived a different life. 

Dean must have fallen asleep on this couch with the native-style blanket fallen over him a hundred times. But this time, when he wakes, he actually feels rested. He sits up, and listens. He hears birds. The breeze through the curtains and the trees outside. 

He doesn’t remember getting here, but he doesn’t feel scared. 

He gets up and the movement is easy. Nothing hurts - no twingey knees, no crackling of old scar tissue. He feels... amazing. He looks at his hands - no spots, no scars, only freckles, skin smooth and young. He goes over to the door, pauses with his hand on the knob, and then twists it open. 

It’s so bright, so beautiful, the grassy fields that bleed into forest. The leaves and grass are technicolor - their pigment so bright and saturated. The way they blow in the breeze, shivering in warm sunlight, and even the sound of their rustle, it’s all beautiful. There’s a road, unpaved but tidy, that leads across the windswept grass and out of sight, and passes right in front of the cabin. There, gleaming in the sun, is his car. When he looks at it, and out at the road, he has to clutch the doorjamb to catch a shaking breath because somehow suddenly he _knows_... Dean knows every stop on that road. The one that leads to Bobby, to Charlie, to Mom and Dad. To everyone he’s loved and lost. He doesn’t mean to cry, but he isn’t able to stop himself. He isn’t sure if he’s ever cried from being happy before. They're all here, just out of sight, and reachable.

But he doesn’t want to leave here. Not just yet. There’s a reason, he knows, that he would love to stay. 

From behind him, soft and familiar, even after so much time,

“Hello, Dean.” 

** THE END **

**Author's Note:**

> *Long exhale*  
> That helped. I hope it maybe helped you too. ❤️


End file.
